FCC Chief Asked To Recuse Herself in DoubleClick Deal

“I was shocked and disappointed to learn this late in the proceedings that Jones Day was representing DoubleClick in this proceeding,” Jeff Chester, founder of the Center for Digital Democracy, said in a telephone interview. “Chairman Majoras should have made a public announcement and recused herself the moment Jones Day was hired.”

A possible conflict of interest has led two consumer advocacy groups, the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), to petition Federal Trade Commission Chair Deborah Platt Majoras to recuse herself from participating in the FTC’s review of Google’s proposed acquisition of online advertising service DoubleClick.

In their petition, CDD founder Jeff Chester and EPIC Director Marc Rotenberg said that they first learned on Monday that DoubleClick has hired Jones Day, a Washington law firm, to represent the company before the FTC. Majoras’s husband, John Majoras, is an equity partner in Jones Day.